EARSHOT
                                                                          

As Yar’Adua Emerges PDP Presidential Candidate...
                                                                       
Governor Umaru Musa Yar’Adua has emerged the first presidential candidate for the 2007 presidential election. He is Obasanjo’s candidate, but that should not matter. Obasanjo owns the PDP anyway. If Yar’Adua’s election was not free and fair, it is nothing new. Fraud, election rigging and dishonesty have become signature traits of the Nigerian president.

However, what is important is that all Nigerians, including Yar’Adua himself, know that Yar’Adua’s presidency remains a distant Plan B. The president still does not want to go next year, and his faculties are still desperately working hard to achieve his aim. So, while all Nigerians must ensure a free and fair election next year, they should not expect that Obasanjo will give that to them. They must fight for and insist on it. 2007 must never be like 2003.

 

LAST WORD

 

Issues That Won’t Go

By

Sam Nda-Isaiah

samndaisaiah@yahoo.com

I am reproducing this article first published on October 23, 2005, due to its relevance today.


The last six years in Nigeria have been likened to a blitzkrieg. Many things which were once thought to be the preserve of banana republics or at least could happen only in faraway “bush” countries have happened in Nigeria. And probably because the current crop of Nigerian leaders appeared to have got away with murders, they have kept expanding the frontiers of evil. But there are some issues that will not just go and one day – in fact, very soon – answers will have to be provided for them.
President Olusegun Obasanjo has even helped in setting a precedent with the Oputa Panel. The only difference between the future “Oputa Panel” and the one constituted by Obasanjo may only be that the next one might be more far-reaching and consequential than Justice Chukwudifu Oputa’s toothless commission. A few of such issues will suffice for this column today, as there are far more than can possibly be contained on this page.

• The gruesome murder of Nigeria’s serving attorney-general and minister of justice, Chief Bola Ige, will not just fade away. The next government must see it as an article of faith to thoroughly unravel many of the mysteries and rumours currently making the rounds. Nigerians are still waiting to know if there is any substance at all in the allegations (whether “wide or wild”) that his cold-blooded murder is related to the 2003 general elections. Nigerians will also like to know why everyone in Esa Oke (including dead people) voted for Obasanjo’s PDP in 2003. Also, it will be interesting to know why the judiciary brought itself so low with the way it handled the case. With the exception of Justice Mashud Akinfemi Abbas who recused himself from the case because of “intense pressure from unexpected quarters,” we shall like to know why the judges that handled the case didn’t feel any empathy with the deceased, who was himself a distinguished lawyer, and Justice Atinuke Ige, the murdered attorney-general’s wife, who, like them, was a member of the bench.

• The gassing and subsequent death of the Oyi of Oyi, Dr. Chuba Okadigbo, the vice presidential candidate of the opposition party (ANPP), whose only offence was that he insisted on holding a political rally (in a democracy, by the way) in which the elected governor of Kano State was present. Anyone who thinks that the issue of the circumstances of Okadigbo’s death will not come up again must certainly be living in a fool’s paradise.

• The cold-blooded murder of Chief Marshal Harry. A few days before this ANPP top brass was killed in his guest house in Abuja, he complained to all who cared to listen that he was being stalked. He wrote several letters to the police including the then inspector-general, Tafa Balogun, informing them of the threats he had received from certain quarters. When the killers finally got him, IGP Balogun presented a cheque the police “recovered” from the “armed robbers” that killed him. Nigerians almost believed him until Mr. Donatus Etiebet, the ANPP chairman, told the world what a compulsive liar the IG was. The said cheque, Etiebet declared, was taken to the police station earlier by him. Thank God this happened in 2003. If all that had happened now, we would probably not hear anything from Etiebet as a lot of water has passed under the bridge since then. All the same, Nigerians are still waiting for the true story of Marshal Harry’s killing.

• Everything was going fine with Chief Aminasoari Dikibo, the PDP deputy national chairman for the South-South, until he started insisting on some things within the party. Not long after that, he got shot. The bullet hit him but didn’t touch any of the others in the car with him and didn’t even pierce through the glass – it simply found its way into his head like magic! The president quickly said it was another case of armed robbery attack – as if armed robbery is a gainful employment he had created. Audu Ogbeh, the then PDP chairman, immediately impugned the armed robbery cock–and–bull story. Up until now, nobody has found those “armed robbers”. And like the deaths of Bola Ige and Chuba Okadigbo, Harry Marshal’s death is not being investigated by the government. But nobody is complaining. Nigerians are simply waiting for the next Oputa Panel. There are also a lot of other issues that would simply not go, no matter how anyone tries.

• Starting from May 29, 1999, arising from the mouth-watering price of crude oil the world has experienced, Obasanjo’s government has received and expended more than N10 trillion. It is impossible to probe the Obasanjo government at the moment for obvious reasons. But it won’t be long before it becomes possible to do so. Nigerians are known to be long-suffering.

• Along with that, Nigerians will like to know why, in spite of the bi1lions that have been spent on NEPA since 1999, all they got was a mere change of name; why it has been so impossible to repair the refineries and build new ones, and why more than N300 billion was “expended” on road construction between 1999 and 2003, when Nigerians know better. Nigerians will also like to know from the next “Oputa Panel” how a certain presidential relation called Julius Makanjuola escaped; and why, when some political office holders are buying aircraft and spending N6 billion of their own money buying up bank shares, others, mere pickpockets in comparison, are being hounded and arrested because they do not belong to the “right group”.

• The chap who has been the de jure minister of petroleum might also be required to answer questions that would be too complicated and esoteric for lesser employees lower down the rung.

• The Abuja National Stadium issue will most certainly come up. The federal government has expended more than N60 billion to bring it up. Some even alleged that the government spent over N100 billion. But the World Bank said the building could not have cost more than N19 billion.

• The Odi and Zaki-Biam murders will be revisited and the next Oputa Panel will help in unknotting the maze surrounding them. Why were so many innocent, defenceless, unarmed children and women killed like insects and nothing has happened. The reason why an 80-year-old blind man would be shot dead at close range, for instance, shall be part of the raison d’etre of the Oputa Panel.

• The spine-chilling manner in which the 2003 elections were held will still not leave our memory. We will like to know how people like Chris Uba became a law unto themselves. Why he has been able to install somebody as governor against the wishes of an entire people would be a case study for political scientists. Pundits will also want to know how he organised the abduction of a governor in broad daylight because the governor refused to sign away the state’s cheques to him. The next government after Obasanjo (like Obasanjo did to Abacha) would make it possible for Nigerians to know why it has been possible for the federal government to give protection with tax payers’ money to a rogue personality who should be in a maximum security prison.

All these are just a tip of a large iceberg, as everyone knows. The government and those who run it may now be beating their chests but that has nothing to do with the time-honoured truth that no evil ever goes unpunished!